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2. software patents are stupid and should be removed anyway. If one person had an idea there is sure as hell another person that has the same idea. tbh, the whole patent thing is just considered the "2nd most stupid thing ever 'invented'" by me. Right after weapons.

As someone that have to run circles around stupid, generalized software patents I couldn't agree more.
.... But on the other hand, as long as they exist, unless you plan to face bankruptcy, you have to leave by the law of the land.

3. recursive to my arguments

Not sure what you mean.

4. in case you really signed a contract about something like that, you should be abandoned in the desert and even if you manage to get out alive, you should be banned from using a computer EVER again. There is not a single good reason why something should be kept secret. If something needs to be kept secret, it's something that shouldn't be done in the first place, since you don't want the public to know about it and if you don't want the public to know about something it must be considered 'bad' by moral implications of society, thus it must not be done.

... You're being very naive.
Obviously you never worked in the company remotely related to the security world or any type of governmental world.

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If you knew what a democracy was, and that it is supposed to serve humans, and humans like open-source better, and it stimulates the most intelligent, who in turn are the ones most fit to run a system, to everyones benefit.

Democracy is the tyranny of the majority, pure and simple. And if you actually understood it, you would not want it.

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When we are talking of Linux's success we are obviously not talking about the desktop, atleast not yet. We are talking about servers, embedded, HPC, mobile, clusters, 3d/SFX industry, etc, so basically everything beyond the desktop.

Not only are companies often paying for Linux support (Red Hat has made it's fortune through this) but they often invest money into further development of Linux so it's seldom a zero-cost option, hence that is hardly Linux main attraction. If it was then they might aswell choose BSD which is also free, however as we see not only is Linux largely the number one choice in the aforementioned sectors, but as mentioned it's also where lots of companies choose to invest in development.

Linux is the world largest collaborative open source project bar none, with Linus and other key kernel maintainers having the 'problem/priviledge' of sifting through tons of code submitted by companies and individuals who are hoping it will make it into the kernel.

Obviously the GPL has had a great part in this success, as in practice it means that if company A wants to enhance Linux so that it works better for their needs, everyone else is legally entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labour, of course the benefit for company A is that it will also be able to enjoy the enhancements made to Linux by company B, etc

If there is no legal 'incitament' for companies to release their enhancements, history shows us that they very seldom will, in particular if there is a competitive advantage to those enhancements. This is not surprising as a company is generally the equivalent of the most selfish and greedy person you can imagine.

Of course in a perfect world there would be no need for licences at all, not even something as permissive as BSD/MIT, but this is not a perfect world, and companies (and not so seldom individuals) won't play fair unless they have to.

This is what is 'sad but true'.

I know all of this rhetoric. And at the end of the day, most people and companies use Linux because it is free as in beer. When they do pay for it, its not because they want to help open source, its because they realize they don't want to maintain anything. They want to call someone up and have them fix it.

There is no such thing as "playing fair". There is winning and losing. Collaboration is only done when it suits you to win.

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You seem to be seriously confused. There are over hundred companies employing linux kernel developers. The major contributors are fulltime developers. It seems to work for them.

By the way the biggest part of linux kernel is driver code. If I had to guess I'd say over 70 percent. It is nvidia who don't want to play by the rules here. Go and bitch at them.

I don't see how anything you said invalidated anything I said.

People were posting that Linux is designed to give users their freedom, and I said that is crap, people just want something for free that works. They will gladly download Ubuntu and complain that it doesn't make their randomly purchased laptop look good enough compared to Windows which to them was also free since it came with the laptop.

Companies will buy plenty of servers than load Linux on there, pay nothing for support or development, and contribute nothing to support or development. They only care that Linux was free to them, so they can blow the cash elsewhere.

NVidia has produced a driver that many companies who DO pay for Linux and DO perform high level graphics work need to continue to do so. However, issues like this was why Windows is making up big time in the high end workstation space.

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I call bullshit, what determines 'bad' performance? Not as good as under Windows? OSX would be dead in the water then.

OS X *is* dead in the water. The only computer gaming platform right now is Windows.

Valve has shown that gaming on Linux works, showing better performance in their opengl tests compared to Windows.

With proprietary drivers. Unless you mean Intel, which is only able to run old games (L4D is an old game.)

High performance gaming on Windows means you can get 60FPS with high resolutions and maximum details on a demanding game released this year.

You are obviously the one living in a fantasy world.

Benchmarks say otherwise.

What? The kernel devs have had the exact same position long before Intel and AMD even started dabbling in GPGPU solutions, the reason Linux enjoys such a strong hardware support out-of-the-box is a direct result of their hardnose stance.

I don't buy any of your arguments. With that logic, the kernel should not provide any GPL exceptions at all, so that you wouldn't be able to run GPL incompatible software on it. That way, userspace software vendors would open source their products. Yeah, I can see *that* one working.

No. The kernel is a required, low level component of the OS. Just like the GPL itself provides a built-in exception for using low-level proprietary OS components with GPL software without resulting in a GPL violation, so should the kernel do the reverse. The NVidia driver is a driver, and thus cannot work reliably outside kernel space. Forbidding them from using kernel interfaces is immoral. Why is it OK that I can run a GPL app on Windows, which links against Microsoft's C library, but I can't have a proprietary driver making use of an interface of a GPL kernel?

In my eyes, what the kernel devs are doing is plain bigotry. The kernel is a required component and you cannot work around it. If you're not allowing proprietary vendors to use it in order to be able to offer support and stay competitive in the licensing policy of their choice, then you're being a bigot. If NVidia isn't allowed to interface with the kernel, then Google shouldn't be allowed either. Much of the Android stack is proprietary, yet no one sees a problem with the Linux kernel sitting at the center of it. And NVidia isn't actually even modifying the kernel, let alone distribute it. It's not like they have changed the kernel and refuse to GPL their changesets. The only thing they're trying to do is to use an interface.

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OS X *is* dead in the water. The only computer gaming platform right now is Windows.

It's not completely terrible. Windows is by far the best overall option, given the driver quality and the game choices. OS X is hamstrung by both, plus the inability to get the highest end graphics hardware possible. But I can play some MMOs and strategy games without a big deal on OSX. Newer MBP/MBPr platforms are using the GeForce 650M. The real problem is the lack of high end graphics in the iMac and Mac Pro.

Now iOS on the other hand is becoming quite a monster of a gaming platform. But that is another thing entirely.

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People were posting that Linux is designed to give users their freedom, and I said that is crap, people just want something for free that works. They will gladly download Ubuntu and complain that it doesn't make their randomly purchased laptop look good enough compared to Windows which to them was also free since it came with the laptop.

What if I told you that pre-installed Windows is not free? 0_0

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While you are technically correct, the reality is that it makes no difference. It comes with most of the desktops or laptops people purchase, and is therefore perceived as free. If I build my own hardware, then yes I need to buy my own copy of Windows and know the costs. But how many people do that? Very few.

Further, that pre-installed Windows is also configured to work with all the wizz-bang features of the hardware. When someone wipes Windows off the system and replaces it with Linux, they find that not everything "just works". Then Linux sucks to them, and they go back to Windows. Linux is no longer free, because they wasted a bunch of time and effort on it.

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And some wonder why people think the Linux community is full of self-righteous assholes who think they are better than everyone else...

Its because the so-called Linux community IS full of self-righteous assholes who think they are better than everyone else.

Thanks for making that clear again to everyone.

Of course, you can't show me where people can purchase non-Windows bearing hardware which is less expensive than buying a mass-market computer with Windows pre-installed... no, you can only say people are stupid.